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02.11

Usability to the Rescue

By Donald Christiansen

I was surprised recently when I came across a reference to the usability profession. Somehow I had not been aware that such a profession existed.

However, a little research revealed that the Usability Professionals’ Association was founded in 1991 and now has 2,500 members in 11 countries. Usability, as defined by the UPA, is “the degree to which something—software, hardware, or anything else—is easy to use and a good fit for the people who use it . . . It is whether a product is efficient, effective, and satisfying for those who use it.”

This is what most of us who ever designed anything hope for, and most companies expect these positive outcomes for any new product they market. Unfortunately, the ubiquity of the computer along with the rapid pace of development of sophisticated software applications does not readily guarantee such ideal results.

In reviewing the objectives of usability professionals, I was reminded of a recent survey of some 4,500 computer users, in which they were asked to rate their satisfaction with their own computer in three categories: (1) useful, (2) easy to use, and (3) enjoyable to use. Among users of four major computer brands, ratings ranged from 58 to 66 percent. Apple’s rating was 80 percent. Not much for marketers to seize upon for use as promotional endorsements. Here, I thought, is an opportunity for the usability folks to roll up their sleeves and get to work.

Further underscoring the requirement for better user-centered designs is the increasing need for tech support for computer products, along with its often less than satisfactory execution. Online complaints from disheartened computer users when seeking technical support abound. “I’ll never buy a computer from that company again” is not an unusual conclusion.

The Way It Was

In simpler days it seemed sufficient to call in the technical writers at the conclusion of a new product development. With help from the application engineers, they would produce a spec sheet along with advice to the customer on how to safely fire it up, use and maintain it. This constituted the typical instruction manual. Of course, they grew thicker with product complexity, and multiple applications of a product compounded the problem. Ideally, say their makers, today’s computer-embedded products should explain themselves, obviating the need for any written instructions beyond an explanation of how to plug them in. Unfortunately, when this has been tried, the programmed instructions are often beyond the comprehension of the bewildered customer.

How Usability Should Work

What is needed from the usability professional seems to be a fusion of the customer’s expectations, the human-factors engineer’s sensibilities, and the technical writer’s ability to communicate with the customer at his level of comprehension. A major objective is to identify user-centered factors and encourage usability testing at the design stage and its continuance through product development, refinement and deployment. Appropriately, the usability professional’s background is likely to be in human-factor psychology, human-computer interaction, or technical communications.

Challenges to User Friendliness

Traditional hindrances to the steps needed in user-centered design include the usual time-to-market pressures, plus developers’ fear of alerting competitors through customer involvement at too early a stage. (Typically the first exposure of a new product to customers is the beta test, in which it is made available to a select few customers for use and evaluation. Prior to that all testing is normally done in house and is termed alpha testing. In certain cases, a particular customer may be invited to participate in the developer’s in-house testing.) Then there’s the belief of many high-tech players that ultimately the best way to test the usability of a product is to put it on the market and see what happens. Who knows? Aside from finding faults its developers were unaware of, the customers might adapt it to uses that the developers never envisioned!

There are numerous cases of post-deployment redesign for improved usability. In one example, Ford dealers encountered serious problems with an accounting system the Ford Motor Company had designed specifically for them. As a result of dealer feedback, the company redesigned some 90 percent of the system and obviated the need for further calls for help from the dealers. In still another case, Microsoft revised the design of the print-merge function of its Word for Windows application when its customers were spending up to 45 minutes or more to get a satisfactory response from the company’s tech support.

Is it beyond our expectations that computer-based products could be so reliable and user friendly that the tech support function would no longer be needed? Displaced tech support personnel might then find more creative employment as usability professionals.

I am not sure at which critical junctures today’s usability pros can enter the challenging design-development fray, or to what extent they can impact conventional design procedures. But I cheer them on and hope for their successes.

Resources

For more on the Usability Professionals’ Association

Official website: www.usabilityprofessionals.org

User Experience Magazine (print quarterly)

Journal of Usability Studies (online quarterly)
www.usabilityprofessionals.org/upa_publications/jus/
jus_home.html

For more on user-centered design            

• International Standard ISO 13407

• Norman, D.A., and S.W. Draper, User-Centered System Design: New Perspectives on

• Human Computer Interaction, Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, 1986.

• Chapanis, A., The Chapanis Chronicles: 50 Years of Human Factor Research,

• Education, and Design, Aegean, 1999.

• Christiansen, D., Black-on-Black Design,
  http://www.todaysengineer.org/2004/Jun/backscatter.asp

• Bias, R.G., and Mayhew, D.J. (Eds.), Cost-Justifying Usability, Academic Press, 1994.

• Kitsuse, A., “Why Aren’t Computers . . .,” Across the Board, Oct. 1991.

• Landauer, T., The Trouble with Computers, MIT Press, 1995.

• Reed, S., “Who Defines Usability? You Do!,” PC Computing, Dec. 1992.

Donald Christiansen is the former editor and publisher of IEEE Spectrum and an independent publishing consultant. He is a Fellow of the IEEE. He can be reached at donchristiansen@ieee.org.